'Global warming' hype reaches fever pitch

As cold weather sweeps across much of the U.S. and buries New England in several feet of snow, global warming hyperbole reached new heights today as an apocalyptic international report, “Meet the Climate Change,” warned the world is reaching a “point of no return” that will bring unprecedented famine and drought catastrophes.

The report was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Centre for American Progress in the United States and the Australia Institute.

It warns the danger point will be reached when temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750, before the industrial revolution – and the world may be only 10 years away.

While the global average temperature has risen only 0.8C, according to the data gathered by those advocating radical actions, the global warming lobby sees the glass half empty – cautioning the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.

In addition to famine and drought of spectacular proportions, the report warns of increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests.

“There is an ecological time bomb ticking away,” said Stephen Byers, former British transport minister and a close ally of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The report urges all G-8 countries to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010.

The report comes just three weeks before the Kyoto Protocol, designed to deal with the climate change issue, takes legal effect on signatories Feb. 16.

The controversial Kyoto Protocol became binding on industrialized nations who have signed onto it after Russia reluctantly moved to ratify it.

But, Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin reports, Vladimir Putin’s personal economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, said last summer Russia’s approval of Kyoto came under severe duress – an “all-out and total war on Russia” directed by Blair. He said the pressure included “bribes, blackmail and murder threats.”

Illarionov said global warming advocates refused to answer questions posed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at a Moscow symposium. He claimed British science advisers tried to stop skeptics from being heard.

“When this attempt to introduce censorship … failed, other attempts were made to disrupt the seminar,” said Illarionov.

Illarionov said “none of the assertions made in the Kyoto Protocol and the ‘scientific’ theory on which it is based have been borne out by actual data. … There is no evidence confirming a positive linkage between the level of carbon dioxide and temperature change. If there is such a linkage, it is of a reverse nature. … The statistical data … are often considerably distorted if not falsified.”

While some in the U.S. have offered sharp criticism of the ideology driving the global warming crusade, none of the rhetoric has been as penetrating as Illarionov’s, who compared it “with man-hating totalitarian ideology with which we had the bad fortune to deal during the 20th century, such as National Socialism (and) Marxism.”

“All methods of distorting information existing in the world have been committed to prove the validity of these theories,” he continued. “Misinformation, falsification, fabrication, mythology, propaganda. Because what is offered cannot be qualified in any other way than myth, nonsense and absurdity.

Illarionov’s comments, made in a press conference, were quoted by the Moscow News but received little international attention.

He described the protocol as “one of the biggest, if not the biggest, international adventures based on man-hating totalitarian ideology, which, incidentally, manifests itself in totalitarian actions and concrete events, particularly academic discussions, and which tries to defend itself using disinformation and falsified facts. It’s hard to think of any other word but ‘war’ to describe this.”

Yuri Izrael, one of the three vice chairmen of the panel, said: “The Kyoto Protocol aims to impoverish our country, and not only us but our children and grandchildren.”

“There have been examples in our fairly recent history of how a considerable portion of Europe was flooded with the brown Nazi ideology, the red Commie ideology that caused severe casualties and consequences for Europe and the entire world,” said Illarionoc. “Now there is a big likelihood that a considerable part of Europe has been flooded with another type, another color of ideology, but with very similar implications for European societies and human societies the world over. And now we in Russia are facing a historical opportunity: Are we going to let the genie out of the bottle as the previous generations let the Nazi and Communist genies out of the bottles or not?”

While Putin agreed to participate in Kyoto, some observers believe he left Russia enough wiggle room for his country to back out of ratification.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, undeveloped Third-World nations – including China, India, Brazil and Mexico – will be free to produce whatever they want. Yet 82 percent of the projected emissions growth in future years will come from these countries. This is why many critics see is global wealth redistribution scheme rather than a real plan to improve the environment.

“The wealth of the United States is, and has always been, the target,” says Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center. “The new scheme to grab the loot is through environmental scare tactics.”

He predicts international corporations, “who owe allegiance to no nation, will bolt America and move their factories, lock, stock, and computer chip to those Third World countries where they will be free to carry on production. But that means the same emissions will be coming out of the jungles of South America instead of Chicago. So where is the protection of the environment? You see, it’s not about that, is it?”

He points out that hidden in the small print of the treaty is a provision that calls for the “harmonizing of patent laws.”

“Now, robbing a nation of its patent protection is an interesting tactic for protecting the environment, don’t you think?” he adds.

DeWeese concludes: “The fact is that one person now stands between the global warming jackals and economic sanity ? George W. Bush. Will he stand firm in his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol? Or will he capitulate to massive international pressure and sell America’s soul?”